


again and again and again and again and again (until it's perfect)

by ApatheticRobots



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Time Loop, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28364445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: Skyfire wakes in the ice.And then he wakes in the ice and wakes in the ice and wakes in the ice and wakes in the ice and
Relationships: Jetfire | Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74





	again and again and again and again and again (until it's perfect)

**Author's Note:**

> written in a day and unbeta'd.

Skyfire wakes in the ice.

He doesn’t know it, cause he was still in stasis, but if he heard the voice that ordered him to be shocked back to life again and again he’d immediately be able to hear the desperation in the tone. When it finally works and he finally blinks for the first time in millions of years he looks up at a sky too blue to be the one over Cybertron and a face he’d recognize no matter how many years had passed. Starscream’s optics glint with something like hope. 

“Starscream,” he says, vocalizer thick with both static and the ice still clinging to his lines. “It’s you.”

He reaches up, and Starscream grabs his wrist, clutching it tight. His digits tap a pattern on Skyfire’s still-slightly-numb plating and it takes him a moment to decipher the words. They can’t be so open here. There are people watching, and judging. It’s like the Academy all over again.

“Good to see you’re not dead,” is all Starscream says, and he steps back and another mech takes his place. He barely listens, and misses the mech’s name when he gives it. 

He’s given a badge, and dragged off to a ship, and he doesn’t see Starscream again.

It’s only days later, in the darkness and quiet of evening when all the other Decepticons have already gone to bed that there’s a quiet tapping outside his door, and when he gets up and goes to open it he immediately finds himself with an armful of Seeker. Starscream marches in and locks the door behind him, then shoves Skyfire back until he’s seated on the berth and plants himself right where he belongs; on Skyfire’s lap, looming over him.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers, and Skyfire’s spark soars. He leans forward and Skyfire meets him halfway there and for a little while it feels like nothing’s changed.

Then the next day he stares at Starscream spitting curses and insults and shooting at things that have done no wrong. Skyfire just watches his old partner’s cruelty unfold before his optics and realizes things have changed so, so much. Starscream had never been kind. But he had never been a monster.

Skyfire stops him from killing a local lifeform and Starscream looks at him, betrayed, then shoots him in the chest. And Skyfire doesn’t stop him.

Skyfire wakes in the ice.

He sits up as soon as he blinks back to life, vents heaving, waiting for the pain in his spark and feeling sick when it doesn’t come. He looks to the side and Starscream is standing beside him, optics glinting with hope and also a concerning amount of fear.

Skyfire says nothing.

“Good to see you’re not dead,” his partner says, and his voice has that wavering quality it gets when he’s trying to hide his nerves. He sets a hand on Skyfire’s arm.

“I think I might be,” Skyfire says in response, and Starscream bites his lip. His grip on Skyfire’s arm tightens. Will he shoot again? If Skyfire says something he doesn’t like? He’s always had issues with trust, but all this time has clearly made them worse. Skyfire doesn’t know who he is anymore. Skyfire also does not love him any less, and it almost scares him.

This time Skyfire doesn’t wait days. He doesn’t wait for Starscream to knock on his door. He leaves as soon as there’s no optics on him and he goes to the other side. Begs them not to kill him and to give him a place to stay.

They welcome him in. Obviously. Because they’re the “good guys” even if they might have been responsible for Vos and the war and just as much murder as the Decepticons. Lying in a berth too small for him with no compensation for his wings because they don’t know how to handle fliers, he tells himself again and again that this is better. That this will be better. Because he won’t have to watch Starscream act like a mech he doesn’t know.

The next day he overhears a group mechs talking together. One of them makes a tasteless joke about Seekers and their interfacing habits, and the others all laugh, and Skyfire clenches his hands into fists and tells himself this is better.

He wants to simply stay inside forever, but they are still at war, and it’s not long before mechs come calling at Skyfire’s door to get him to help on missions. He tries to tell them he isn’t going to kill anyone. The Praxian’s expression sours, and he presses a gun into Skyfire’s hands and tells him he’ll do what he’s ordered. 

He manages to get away with simply being a glorified taxi. The Autobots clearly aren’t used to being shuttled around by someone alive, because they kick at his interior and talk like he can’t hear them and get startled when he responds. He doesn’t mind.

Really.

When he arrives at the battlefield and lets everyone off and transforms and starts looking for a good place to cower and hide until it’s over, it takes him mere seconds to spot the red and blue and silver plating across the way. Starscream takes a second more to finish firing at the Autobot that had been trying to aim for his wings and then he turns. And he sees Skyfire. And even at this distance, Skyfire can see the emotions playing out across his face. Shock, hurt, betrayal, anger. He almost apologizes. Then Starscream transforms and streaks past the Autobots and fires a barrage at Skyfire and doesn’t give him a chance to say anything.

Skyfire wakes in the ice.

Before anyone can say a word, before Starscream can lay a hand on him, he grabs a rifle from the nearest mech holding one and shoots his partner in the head. Seconds later, the rest of the mechs open fire, and there’s nothing else.

Skyfire wakes in the ice.

He registers touch first, and opens his eyes to see Starscream leaning over him, expression somewhere between fury and fear, digging his claws into Skyfire’s chest.

"Get up, _”_ he hisses, tightening his hold and sending prickling pain through Skyfire’s sensory net. “Get _up._ And get moving.” He gives Skyfire just enough space to haul himself to his pedes before grabbing at him again, clutching the shuttle’s wrist hard enough to make the plating creak. Skyfire finds himself dragged away to the Decepticon’s ship before he can get a word in edgewise. 

He hardly gets a moment alone. He’s placed in quarters adjoining Starscream’s, and the Seeker periodically checks in on him. He’s pretty sure the camera in the corner isn’t part of the official network. Whenever he’s assigned a mission, Starscream is there too, never far out of sight and watching over him like some kind of twisted guardian angel. He keeps his optics on Skyfire and the rifle Skyfire holds. Skyfire isn’t sure what he’s waiting for.

He couldn’t kill him again if he wanted to. Not with the way it damn near split his spark the first time.

Few of the already sparse missions he’s assigned on bring him anywhere near battle. It’s always surveillance, or transport, or patrol. Nothing that would get him into a conflict. After the Autobots and the “you’ll follow orders” and the looks shot his way just because he has a set of wings on his back, it’s almost a relief.

It gives him a lot of time to think, though. About all of this. So he sits himself down on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean (with Starscream standing no more than a few meters away) and thinks. Is he dead? Part of him thinks maybe he truly died when he crashed back then, that he’d never been thawed out and revived. That this is just some illusion made by Primus or his own dying processor or some other force of nature. Another part of him, the part that’s a scientist at spark, wants to experiment. Push the limits of whatever _this_ is and see how far he can get. Could it be some kind of outlier ability? A mutation of his spark? 

Morbidly, he can’t help but wonder if he even _has_ a spark anymore.

He’s curious. And historically, when he gets curious, not much can stop him from getting an answer. So after they’ve gotten back to the ship and Starscream has made himself at home in Skyfire’s room, seated against his side and reading on some datapad or another, he throws caution to the wind and transforms his chest plating aside.

There’s a choked noise from Starscream. Skyfire barely notices, peering down at his own life source. It looks the same as it ever did. Glowing softly blue, pulsing in a steady rhythm. Experimentally, he goes to stick a digit in it.

Starscream lashes out and catches his hand before he can do so. Skyfire looks at him.

His expression is unreadable. There are too many emotions (or too few emotions) and Skyfire has no idea what’s going through his processor right now. 

Ever so slowly, he moves Skyfire’s hand away and sets it down beside him. Then he glances up at Skyfire’s face once, and-- apparently liking whatever he finds there-- reaches up and curls his digits around Skyfire’s spark. Skyfire shivers and lets him.

The next day, when they’re out on patrol, they’re ambushed by a group of Autobots. One of them makes a lucky shot and it hits Skyfire in the head.

  
Skyfire wakes in the ice. 

There’s touch again, but this time it’s so much more, and he opens his optics and looks down to see Starscream clinging to his chest. The Seeker’s arms are wrapped around his shoulders, and Skyfire can feel him shaking where they’re pressed together. He reaches up and curls an arm around him. 

“Don’t leave me again,” Starscream says, no mind paid to the handful of mechs gathered in a loose circle around them. “Please.”

“I won’t,” Skyfire replies, and he sounds calm even though his processor is spinning a mile a minute. “I won’t.” He isn’t promising. He can’t promise, because if last time proved nothing else, it proved that anything can happen at any time. But he has no plans.

Unlike last time, he’s not sent on a single mission. Also unlike last time, he doesn’t get a single moment alone. He recharges in Starscream’s room, in his berth, with the Seeker curled up in his arms and clinging to him. During the day, he trails after him, helping him with his various duties as Air Commander and being a stabilizing force. He keeps Starscream calm. One of the other Seekers sidles up to him, during one afternoon where Starscream is standing at a computer console and typing furiously at it and Skyfire is seated quietly nearby, and tells him that they’re grateful he’s around. That Starscream’s stopped hurting his subordinates so much because Skyfire’s here. Stopped getting so angry. He says that he’s never seen Starscream smile the way he does when he looks at Skyfire. 

  
Skyfire can only shrug, even though it’s not really a response, and looks back at Starscream. Finally satisfied with whatever he’d been working on, Starscream looks over at him and grins. Then goes back to his work.

“Like that,” says the blue Seeker whose name Skyfire doesn’t know. “It’s like he’s a whole new mech. How’d you tame him?”

There’s an implication about the question that Skyfire doesn’t quite like. Well, it’s not really an implication, just an outright statement, that Starscream is anything to be tamed and not the most interesting mech Skyfire’s ever met. Like he’s a rabid turbofox rather than just an individual. A person. So Skyfire just shrugs again. “I stayed,” he says, and goes back to staring at Starscream’s wings as they twitch with his emotions while he works. 

The Seeker looks at him for a moment, then turns and leaves, and that’s the end of that.

It kind of feels like he’s floating in a haze most days. Like he’s not really _there._ Like any moment he’ll blink and wake up in the ice again. He stays in his room, or he follows Starscream around. Not much else. A little while into it (he can’t be sure how long because his chronometer hasn’t worked since the crash and he can’t see the sky down here to be able to judge by the movement of the sun) Starscream grabs his hand and drags him through hallways and one elevator ride later he’s standing on an open platform, the sky above him and the sea below and Starscream at his side.

He opens his vents wide and lets his first taste of fresh air in a while rush through them. It tastes vaguely of salt. 

Starscream grins up at him, then lets go of his hand and runs forward and swan dives off the edge of the tower. Skyfire almost jumps after him on instinct before there’s the sound of a transformation and a tri-colored jet streaks past him and soars high. He knows an invitation when he sees one, so he shifts his own plating and takes off after his partner. 

For a while it’s just the two of them among the clouds, hardly needing to check the other’s position for how in sync they fly. It’s so much like old times that it’s almost painful. He can almost ignore all the things that are different and pretend, for just a moment, that nothing’s changed.

The sun is setting by the time they finally land, and Skyfire feels lighter than he has in a very long time and Starscream is smiling like the sun, and the Seeker threads their digits together and all is right. And then they get down into the belly of the ship and there’s shouting and Skyfire sees Starscream’s wings fall. The tension hits him like a physical wave. Their little flight was unauthorized, even though dictating that _should_ be Starscream’s job, as Air Commander. He lets go of Skyfire’s hand and steps forward to justify himself.

It gets him a strike across the face. Skyfire steps forward and breaks the offending mech’s arm before he realizes what he’s done. Sometimes his own brute strength scares him a little.

Starscream grabs his hand again and drags him away, and he can tell the Seeker is anxious just by looking at him. When they get back to their room, he locks the door, then climbs onto the berth and orders Skyfire to hold him. So Skyfire does.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he says, voice wavering, and so, so quiet.

“Probably not.”

“He’s going to come for you. Once he’s fixed. He won’t kill me, but he might kill you. He’ll kill you for disrespect _and_ as a way to hurt me. He needs me, and he knows it, but he also knows he can make my life a living hell and still keep me.” There’s shouting somewhere in the distance. Starscream presses closer against him and ignores it. “He thinks I’m his. That I belong to him.”

“You’re not,” Skyfire says immediately. “You don’t.”

Starscream looks up at him and smiles, a little bit sardonically and a little bit sad. “Sometimes I can’t help but wonder.”

Skyfire holds him tighter. “We should leave.”

He hesitates, but eventually Starscream shakes his head. “We can’t. He’s too angry. He’ll hunt us both down and there’ll be nowhere we can hide.” He reaches up and places a hand over Skyfire’s chest. “Next time,” he says, and confirms what Skyfire had already concluded. “When we can catch him by surprise. All of them by surprise. We’ll kill them all and try again.”

Before Skyfire can ask whether he remembers _everything_ and what it’s like for someone who doesn’t die every time (or think to maybe veto that plan with the murder), Starscream sinks his claws in and tears away the plating of Skyfire’s chest that conceals his sparkchamber. He gets up on his knees, presses a kiss against the swirling mass of energy, then jams the business end of his nullray into the chamber and fires.

Skyfire wakes in the ice. 

He lies still, waiting. Opens his optics to blue sky and swirling snow. He looks over to see Starscream standing there, expression carefully neutral (badly concealing excitement), with a few mechs gathered around them. Starscream walks forward, and Skyfire gives him a tiny nod, and the Seeker smiles.

“Glad to see you’re not dead,” he says, leaning forward and slotting his lips against Skyfire’s. In the same instance, he presses a rifle drawn from his subspace into the shuttle’s hands, and taps a short countdown before pulling away and spinning around and firing both nullrays at once directly at that silver mech that had hurt him before. Skyfire sits bolt upright and takes careful aim, picking off the mechs that seemed to be reacting the fastest. It’s messy anarchy and he has no idea what’s going on, so he just keeps firing, hoping he doesn’t hit Starscream in the chaos of it all. When the blaster fire settles, he’s still seated. Starscream is still standing. And they’re surrounded by twisted piles of lifeless gray armor.

Starscream turns and hauls himself up onto Skyfire’s lap. Skyfire moves to wrap his arms around the Seeker’s waist without being told, and it earns him a bright grin. 

“What now?” Skyfire asks. “We leave?”

“We will. I stored a cache of supplies nearby, we just need to get that and then we’ll go.” He kisses Skyfire again, then gets up and walks away. Expecting Skyfire to follow. Which he does, because that’s what he’s always done, since the day they’d first met. They make their way across the silent tundra. “Cybertron is a no-go, since technically it’s still inhabited by Shockwave and some Autobots, but I’m sure we’ll find somewhere. You still have your database of planets we visited, right?”

He does. It’s not like he ever had a chance to delete it. (He wonders when Starscream deleted his.) “Yes.”

“We’ll pick something from there, then. Get as far away from here as possible. It’s doubtful anyone will come looking, that whole army is a mess when there’s no one to lead them.” He gestures at an innocuous looking pile of snow. “Dig here?”

Skyfire does.

There’s enough energon to last them a while, along with some medical kits and datapads. Between their collective subspaces they manage to fit it all with room to spare. Especially considering just how much subspace Skyfire has when he’s in his root mode. He could probably fit a whole mech in there if he tried. 

“Have we…” He pauses, and Starscream looks at him curiously. “...Ended it?”

  
“Ended it?” Starscream repeats, then seems to think for a moment. Then he laughs, high and cruel. “Yes, I think so.” 

He must know. Even if Skyfire doesn’t understand why this is happening, Starscream clearly does. Skyfire knows his partner well enough to know what the subtle mannerisms of his speech mean. If he’s not outright responsible for whatever brought Skyfire back again and again and again, he’s at least got an intimate understanding of how it works. And quite possibly a modicum of control.

Skyfire thinks he should be mad. He kind of _wants_ to be mad, because if he’s right and Starscream _does_ have a say in whatever “this” is, it means he’s basically just been stringing Skyfire around until he fits the ending the Seeker wants.

But he can’t muster up the anger he knows would be justified. Not when his partner is smiling at him like that, like he hung the stars himself and then invited Starscream to come look. 

He can’t be angry, so he puts his energy towards something a little more productive instead, and pushes himself through Earth’s atmosphere and takes care to make sure he can still see Starscream where the seeker is leading them away from the planet and far into the darkened depths of space. 

They fly for a while. Making idle conversation. Eventually they need to stop to refuel and recharge, and they find a tiny, rocky planet, one far enough away that Starscream deems it safe enough to rest on without risking anyone catching up to them.

They find a place sheltered from the planet’s biting winds, and Starscream curls up against Skyfire’s side and trails his hands down the shuttle’s plating. Whispers things too quiet to hear and presses feather-light kisses over the empty spot on Skyfire’s chest where an emblem had gone in his previous lives. Right over where his spark hums in tandem with the Seeker’s. 

Skyfire closes his eyes, and when he wakes, it’s far from the ice. And he decides he far prefers waking at Starscream’s side than anywhere else.


End file.
